


Conceal, Don't Feel

by plinys



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Based off Disney Movie, Fluff and Angst, Frozen AU, M/M, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You kind of set of an eternal winter,” Thor explains, “everywhere. If you don’t come back with me they’ll be sending people to kill you.”<br/>There’s a second where he sees it, when he sees Loki’s resolve flicker, before he straightens himself up once more and says, “let them try.”</p><p>AKA a Thorki Frozen AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conceal, Don't Feel

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Frozen AU that you didn't know you needed until now. See, I saw the movie and left the theater thinking that I needed this AU in my life , so made [this](http://plinys.tumblr.com/post/68934911370/is-it-terrible-to-admit-that-after-watching-frozen) post, then Ric encouraged me by posting [that](http://under-base.tumblr.com/post/68944339599/dont-worry-fandral-loki-is-my-little-brother-he), and thus this fic was born.  
> There are some minor spoilers for the movie Frozen in this fic, since it's obviously based upon it, but other than that, enjoy my little fic. Also I tried to keep things mostly PG and lighthearted, because as much as I love Thorki smut and all that jazz, this is based off a Disney movie so I have to be a semi-decent person. (Or something like that.)

“I told you, I don’t want to play,” Loki shouts angrily when an ill-fated snowball from his brother’s game knocks into his head.

“Oh come on Loki,” one of them teases, it’s not Thor, but he doesn’t particularly care to distinguish between the rest of Thor’s friends, all he knows is that this one is that annoying blond one. Then again, they’re all annoying and take away his brother’s free time, time he could be spending with Loki

“Stop playing with your stupid snowman and join us,” the same boy says again.

“It’s not stupid!”

“Snowmen are for babies,” Sif says sticking out her tongue and him.

Loki hopes she gets her tongue stuck that way one day would serve her right.

The rest all make noises of agreement, even as Loki starts to protest that they most certainly are not. But he could care less about what they say, because there’s only one person’s opinion that actually matters, and Thor, Thor will agree with him.

He has to. That’s what brothers do!

Loki can’t help the little smile that finds its way onto his face as Thor moves over to stand beside him, because Thor’s going tell Sif that she’s wrong, and maybe he’ll make them go away and they can just play together again.

Except what actually happens, is the exact opposite of what he had in mind.

“Sif’s right,” he says, before pushing over the snowman that Loki had just spent the last hour or so working to get just right, “they are for babies.”

It all happens so fast that he’s not entirely sure what happens, one moment they’re all standing there and the next it’s like an avalanche of snow, rushing down off the roof top. His hands are still held up in the air, pushing Thor away, and he watches eyes wide as his brother tumbles backward just far enough that when the rush of snow comes rushing down it buries him and his friends.

\---

 “Am I cursed?”

“No, of course not,” Frigga answers kneeling down and reaching towards him to wrap his hands in her far warmer ones.

He moves to pull his hands back and away from her, eyes wide, “don’t I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me,” she says voice soft, “I trust you.”

They all kept saying that it was an accident, freak weather or something, nobody wanted to openly say that it was his fault, but he know. Loki had felt it, the power race across his fingertips as he had tried to push Thor away, wishing that all of them would just leave him alone and then it happened.

Everyone was going to be sick for days, and what if they got frostbite and had to lose their feet or something?

What if somebody died?

It would all be his fault.

“What’s wrong with me then,” he asks, desperation creeping into his young voice, because if he’s not cursed, then how was he able to do that, and how did he know that it wouldn’t happen again.

His eyes flickered between his mother who smiled sympathetically back at him and his father who stood back off to the side, not really looking at him.

“You’re just different,” she answers, squeezing his hands in reassurance.

“Different?”

“Years ago, your father found a babe freezing in the snow and we took him into our family,” Frigga starts, but he can already see where this story is going.

“That was me?”

“Yes.“

“So, I might be cursed, you’re not sure,” he says, tugging his hands away quickly, and crossing his arms across in his chest in protest.

“You’re not cursed, you’re my son-“

“But I’m not really, I’m just,” he trails off not sure how he wants to finish that sentence, ducking his head down rather than bothering to finish it.

“You will always be my son.”

He doesn’t need to look up to hear the soft sigh or the rustling of skirts as his mother, Frigga, not his mother, not really, moves towards the other side of the room. He wants to call her back in a second, but his pride won’t allow it, instead he curls his fingers tightly against his side and feels the power racing in their tips the ice-cold feeling the spreads across his center as he listens to their conversation on the other side of the room.

“It would be best if he stayed in his rooms, out of sight, until he learned to control it,” Odin says, his tone firm, “that way we don’t have any more of these,” there was a pause as if he was searching for the right word before settling on,  “incidents.”

“I don’t think-“

“Mother, it’s fine,” Loki speaks up, drawing their attention over to where he stands, “I too think it would be best.”

Just until he figured this whole thing out, it couldn’t be that hard, right? He’d figure out what all this meant so he would never have to hurt anybody again.

He just needed to learn how to hide this curse away, to conceal it beneath layers so nobody would ever notice it again.

\---

 “Brother, come out and play,” Thor calls through the door, “I know you’re in there.”

He’s always in there.

“It’s the first snow of the year,” Thor offers, because while Loki may have been hiding himself away for the last few months he can’t deny that he loves the snow, why just last year they were playing in it together, mother and father had even bought them ice skates, “it’s nearly covered the whole ground, I was thinking we could get Sif and the others together and maybe have a snowball fight? You could be on my team!”

Except last time that went so well, it didn’t take an idiot to figure out that that was why Loki was hiding away. And even though Thor had tried to apologize he had just been greeted with silence every time before so what difference did it make now.

“Or if you don’t want to do that,” he says a hint of desperation slipping into his voice, “we could build a snowman?”

“Go away, Thor,” comes the reply muffled by the doorway, it may be a refusal, but at least he talked back, that has to count for something.

“Next time then,” he shouts back, a bright smile on his face as he knocks on the door once more.

He’s already down the hall that he misses the brief moment where the door cracks open and a dark head of hair peeks out, but it’s gone before Thor could even think about looking over his shoulder, the sound of the wood shutting echoing through the hallway.

\---

“Loki,” Thor calls as he knocks against the ever unmoving door, “I haven’t seen you in a while, just checking that you haven’t died.”

He’s trying for lighthearted he really is, but he feels like the joke falls short. He tries to put a number or a date on the last time that he has seen the other boy, but it’s probably been months. Sometimes he thinks he sees him wandering the halls at night when only the servants are about, but when he chases after the shadow he thinks he sees Thor can never actually catch the image of him.

“It’s snowing again,” Thor speaks to the door, hoping that somewhere on the other side he’s listening, maybe one day he’ll let him in like he knows Loki lets mother in to visit him.

“We could go out and play. I won’t invite the others, just you and me,” he tries, “we could make a snowman?”

There’s a thud from the other side of the door like somebody tossed a book at it or something even heavier, though his hand that presses up against it gets a bone deep chill all at once, probably an open window or something.

“So that’s a no?”

\---

_It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault._

There’s ice coating every inch of the room, overturned tables, the books that his mother had given him as gifts now tossed about the place, their pages likely to be ruined when the coating of ice around them melted.

He’s not certain how he ended up with his back to the door out of his chambers, legs curled up against his chest, the usually comforting green interior of his rooms turned a frozen wasteland staring back at him cursing him.

_“It’s only a few days. I’ll be back before you know it.”_

_“What if something happens when you’re gone, what if I hurt someone?”_

_“You just stay in here until I return and everything will be alright.”_

Except she wasn’t returning now was she.

He almost not certain that he hears it at first, the phantom sound of a knock at his door, before there’s a sound of somebody on the other side slumping against it, unknowingly mirroring his own position.

“I know you’re in there,” comes Thor’s voice from the other side of the door, and for once he doesn’t want to yell at him to go away, “I know you’re hurting, just let me in.”

He wants to, it would be so easy to fling open the door and take comfort in somebody who might even understand the pain and turmoil raging in his heart, but Loki can just imagine how that would go. How Thor would look around the room, take in the snow and ice and suddenly understand what a monster he is, ask for his head on a platter, curse him out into the cold.

No, Loki can’t take that risk, so he pulls his arms tighter around himself wishing he could bury himself in the snow and never come up again.

\---

“Today’s the day, I can do this,” Loki says, to his reflection in the cracked mirror, “I can do this.”

It wouldn’t be long, just his presentation to the court as the second son of the king, there’s a simple ceremony as they welcomed him into adulthood, after some dancing and food, and then Loki would be able to slip back into his rooms without a problem.

He slipped his dark gloves onto his hands, flexing his fingers in the familiar material; he could still feel the traces in his mother’s magic woven into the gloves.

“I can do this."

\---

It’s standing here now the distance between them feeling like an abyss, that he wonders where the years had gone.

Thor remembers all too clearly the little brother that had played with him in the snow on those long winter days, who had raced with him through the halls of the castle, but that child was gone, replaced instead with a young man who held his head high, dark hair long and slicked back behind his ears, with a slight look of disapproval on his face nose upturned as he took in his surroundings.

“You’ve grown,” Thor says finally at a lack of anything else to say.

Loki rolls his eyes at this, though he does turn to give him as attention, a far larger gesture than anything that Loki has done in years, “how perceptive of you. That’s usually how things work, time passes people grow up.”

Yes, he would agree, though normally one did not notice a change so starkly in one that they considered to be their family. Then again, most people didn’t have brothers who locked themselves away in their chambers and never left unless forced to do so.

Thor was the one who always had to be forced into his chambers, never one to sit still for too long, but at some point in time, without Thor even knowing why, Loki had become the opposite.

Instead of saying any of those things, any of the things that he yearns to say, Thor simply says, “you look good.”

“I try.”

\---

One second they’re all laughing and the next second he notices it, the way Loki freezes up at the side of the group his eyes wide, before making some excuse about having to leave. The ceremony isn’t over yet, and he can already imagine how their father will rage if he finds out Loki skipping out on his own birthday celebrations. He tries to help, reaching out to stop him he grabs at Loki’s hand, but when Loki pulls from his grasp he ends up with nothing but a glove in his hand.

Somehow that seems to do the trick even better than Thor actually grabbing onto him, because Loki has turned back around, but the look in his eyes in entirely unreadable.

He sees anger there, but also something else. Loki had always been hard to get a proper read on, even before he had taken to hiding away from the rest of the world.

“Come on, little brother,” Thor says, smiling at him trying to ease some of the tension between them, the tension that is becoming more obvious as people turn to see what is going on between the two sons of Odin, “you can’t leave now, the ceremony has only just begun!”

He moves to close the gap between them, but is slowed down when Loki speaks up, clearly unhappy with him, “leave me alone.”

Thor’s heard that tone too many times before, from the other side of an unmoving door and he’s not about to let Loki close up and hide from him again, to lock himself away never to come out again. Not know when’s Thor’s finally almost got him acting like normal again, or as close to normal as two people who have become strangers in the same house can be.

He reaches out unsure of what exactly he’s going to do, probably pat Loki on the back like he does with Fandral when he’s had too much to drink pushing him forward and steadying him at the same time, but Loki recoils before Thor can even think about it.

“Don’t touch me,” he says a hint of hysteria in his voice.

“Loki, if you’ll just let me-“

“Don’t touch me,” he shouts this time, his arm stretched out to push Thor away, except instead of just getting shoved back, there’s a burst of cold air, frost clings to Thor’s eyelashes even though it’s the middle of summer and it takes him a second before he’s able to take it all in the ice that now coats the floor fanning out from where his Loki’s standing sharp spikes of it framing his body all pointed in Thor’s direction as if fending him off.

“What is this?”

“No no no,” comes a quite repeat of a far too familiar voice, and he feels as if he’s heard these very words before years ago, though Loki’s voice was far more childish then, but the look of horror in those eyes are still there as his green orbs meet Thor’s blue eyes.

He doesn’t have time to focus on that, because there are voices behind them, party goers who had no choice but to turn and see the scene and Thor’s barely focusing on what they’re saying, something about curses and monsters, they remind him of the stories their mother used to tell them as children, of giants that lived in the mountain and caused the winter snows.

When he’s finally pulled his attention back to where Loki was he notices that his brother is gone, the ice shards fall to the ground at once freezing the ballroom floor, but where he runs now a trail of ice follows after him and in a second Thor is bounding off down that path ignoring the shouts of his friends behind him.

\---

His feet pound against the cobblestone path leading out of the palace, past the golden doors that had haunted him for so long. Loki can hear voices shouting at him behind him, no matter how hard he tries to shut them out they keep coming back, louder and more terrified, their eyes wide in terror as they look at what he has done, mothers shoving their children into their houses, the cursed prince they will call him later.

He can see it how.

Every nightmare that he has tried to hide from coming to life all at once.

_I can do this. I can do this._

“I can’t do this,” his own voice betrays him, the traitorous thing that it is.

“Loki,” and it’s Thor again, surely he would have stayed back now, realized what a monster he is, that he never was his brother anyways, but there he is caught up to him already as if he should have known not to run. “Stop this, calm down.”

Stop it, if only he could, if only he could give this curse away, he had tried before, he had kept it locked inside for so long that now it bounds out from his fingertips as he tries to put more distance between them.

Foolish as he is in his heart, he turns back against his better judgment. He’s done this on accident more than enough times, it shouldn’t be too hard to do it on purpose, so he holds one hand out in front of him lets the cool feeling rush about his finger tips and push out towards where Thor and the others are gathering, “leave me alone!”

The two fountains that have framed the walkway up to the palace for as long as he can remember spring to life and the call of his powers, the water running in them turning to ice despite the summer air that had been present mere moments before, stretching between them to bar anyone else from continuing down the same path that Loki had gone.

Hopefully that should do the trick.

He’s not sure what he’s thinking or where he’s going to go, but one thing he knows is that he needs to get away from here. It’s something he had thought about too many times before, too many times since that very first time many years ago when as a child he learned just what he was capable of.

When the water the surrounds the castle freezes by just the touch of his feet that’s all the encouragement he needs before racing across the water that freezes with every step he takes, the ice from his curse, no his powers, stretch out before him, creating a path when he reaches the other side the leads him up into the mountains.

With each step things get easier, he knows the higher he gets that the altitude should be making him feel light headed, he’s read about these things in his books, the rest sky is supposed to feel like its pushing down on him, but for the first time in a while he actually feels free. The ice and snow that he’s struggled to hide all his life as he was trapped in his rooms comes out natural, enveloping him like a protective blanket, and all those fears before seems to flood at from him.

Why had he ever hid?

They didn’t want him there anyways, he didn’t belong with them, but here, this was where he belonged.

Burying himself in the snow as storm clouds of his creation covered the mountain sky, he takes a shaky hesitant breath and holds his hand out before him watching as the snowflakes grow in his hand, and shot up around him, “the cold never bothered me anyway.”

\---

 “Then we’ll kill the beast before it can-“

“No,” Thor thunders, he cares not who it was that spoke up, one of the palace guards no doubt, one of his father’s men, now turned to hunt down their prince.

“Thor,” this time the voice is not of one of the guards, but of his friends, Fandral giving him a nervous smile rather than his usual cocksure one, he’s not certain if that makes it better or worse, “something must be done. It’s the middle of June and it feels like the dead of winter.”

“We are not going to kill him,” Thor says, the anger making his voice louder than is probably necessary, but everybody need to hear this, “Loki is my brother,” _your prince_ , “you would have him dead-“

“Not dead, necessarily,” Sif offers from by his side, “imprisoned until we can figure out what to do with this.”

He followers her gaze around them where the courtyard and palace is now covered in ice, everything’s covered in ice, a chill deep in his bones that matches the worry in his heart.

“If I talk to him he’ll fix this I’m sure, he’s just upset,” Thor reassures her, or is he reassuring himself.

“We’re getting a group together-“

“A hunting party,” he says, the very thought sickening him and making him want to hit something.

“Try not to think about it like that,” Fandral offers, not denying that that is exactly what this is.

“No, I will go alone,” Thor insists, “he’s my little brother, just let me handle this.”

He ignores the mumbled that he hears off to the side a voice that hesitantly reminds him that, “actually he’s not.” No matter what they say Loki will always be the boy in his memories, not the sort of fairytale monster that they want to make him out to be.

Not the one who had run away, Thor would just have to bring him home, and then they would fix all of this, together.

“Don’t worry Fandral! Loki is my little brother. He won’t hurt me,” Thor says, taking the reins of his horse from the servant that had offered them to him, and swinging up on top of the animal, “I’ll be back with him in no time at all.”

\---

It actually takes no time at all to find Loki, the bringing him back thing is another story entirely. He has to tie his horse up when the snow gets too deep to try and ride through, the gust on winds making his cloak whip around him, but he keeps going climbing the mountain until he sees the small castle made of ice.

For once he doesn’t knock at the door, because years of experience have taught him that knocking at doors never gets him anywhere, instead he pushes it open. He’s not sure what he expects, Loki hiding away with that same terrified look he had on his face back in the ballroom when he had pushed Thor away, but this is completely different.

The Loki before him looks more like the man he had seen at the beginning of the festivities, his cloak pulled off of his shoulders, a crown of ice on his head, as he sits on the throne made purely of ice. He doesn’t look scared, instead he looks almost happy a smile that he hasn’t seen on his brother’s face in years, eyes lit up and jaw tilted up defiantly.

“Come to visit me,” Loki asks, his voice dripping dangerously low, as he pushes himself off the throne of ice to move about Thor’s space.

“Loki you must stop this,” he says, “stop playing these games and come home.”

“These games,” he repeats, “I am not playing games! And I am not coming home!”

He moves without the hesitance of before, this time flicking his wrist upwards the ice of the ground rushing forward not to attack Thor but rather to block his path

“Please don’t shut yourself away again,” Thor has the words off his lips before he can even think of the implications, about how desperately he needs Loki to come back with him.

“I just want to be alone, why does nobody ever understand that,” Loki snaps, the power about him snapping in the air between them, “all I ever wanted was to be left alone, but you and father made me come out, it’s your faults this happened! But now you’ve got what you wanted, the cursed creature away from the sacred house of Odin, go back to your father and be a good little prince. I’m happy right here, in my own castle!”

“You kind of set of an eternal winter,” Thor explains, “everywhere. If you don’t come back with me they’ll be sending people to kill you.”

There’s a second where he sees it, when he sees Loki’s resolve flicker, before he straightens himself up once more and says, “let them try.”

“They think you’re a monster.”

“I _am_ a monster!”

“No, you’re not,” Thor insists, “don’t be the monster that they fear you are.”

“Just leave,” Loki roars, this time he doesn’t hesitate, it is not ice that pushes him out the door, but a burst of cold wind that chills him almost as much as the complete rejection he had received from Loki.

This time as the door to the frozen palace it doesn’t open and years of waiting on the other side of a door has taught him that knocking isn’t even worth the effort.

\---

_Eternal winter. Everywhere. Sending people to kill you._

His fingernails bite into the palm of his hands, breathing in and out trying not to let the panic sink back in, just when things had finally been going alright. He thought he could be free from all of them, to free them all from the burden of him, but he has just made it worse.

_It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault._

\---

Thor’s uncertain how he makes it back to the palace, he feels dead on his feet by the time he arrives, a bone deep chill settled into his body that is not just a side effect of the poor weather. He feels cold no matter how close he stands to the fire, the fingers that he offers towards the heat feel as if they will never be thawed again.

His consciousness swims, he feels the touch of a healers hand upon his skin, it reminds him of the magics that his mother used to preform when she was still about, checking his bumps and bruises.

More than anything else it reminds him of that day in the snow years ago, the last time Loki played with the rest of them, before he began to hide himself away. The fall of the snow off the roof how it had buried him beneath it crushing him so he could hardly breathe.

Then waking up in his bed with his little brother curled beside him shaking with worry, he had been so cold until that moment and then as they had talked as children Loki apologizing for some imagined slight, their fight over the snowman thing.

Somehow that had worked far better than any of their mother’s magic had at warming him from the frost that had made him sick that day.

_“Thor! Thor! No no no no, what have I done!”_

_“It’s not your fault, Loki, just an accident.”_

He almost didn’t remember that.

\---

“Are you here to kill me,” Loki asks from his seat upon his throne of ice.

“Not just yet,” the man replies with a smirk, the snowflakes dusting his blonde hair.

“Then why are you here,” he questions, the magic already at the tips of his fingers just in case he needs to send Fandral away just the same way that he had entered.

“It’s Thor.”

Of course it is.

“You can tell my brother that my message remains the same. I’m staying here!”

“He warned us you’d say that,” Fandral says scratching at the back of his head.

“Then why are you here if you already know my answer?”

“He needs true loves kiss otherwise he’ll turn to ice.”

“What?”

That had to be the lamest excuse so far, it reminds him of the tricks Thor used to play as a child, banging on Loki’s door offering him all sorts of bribes if he only came out and played with them all. Offering to steal him cakes from the kitchens or to play with his toys, or to make a snowman with him.

_Snowmen are for babies._

Except Fandral continues without Loki asking him to, and his explanation hits too close to home, far closer than Loki would like to admit. He doesn’t necessarily believe in the power of true love, the magic from the fairytales that he used to read in his rooms when he was all alone. Though what Fandral proceeds to describe isn’t something out of a fairytale it’s something that Loki remembers far more than he’d like to admit, a sickness that is like one is freezing, during their blood to ice unable to get warm.

_It’s not your fault._

“Well, go get Sif to kiss him then,” Loki says, his mouth twisting into a bitter grimace as he remembers that awful girl that has always been follower after his brother, acting as if she too were one of the warriors and men.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Fandral laughs.

“Has-“

“She already tried.”

“Of course she did,” Loki grumbles, the pauses, “it didn’t work, then?”

“If it did would I be standing here?”

Loki weights that question in his head for a moment, before deciding no, if there was any other way Thor’s friends would have sought out that option, no doubt that is where the others had gotten off to, trying to find healers who know how to do the trick, but he already knew there was no trick, no answer to this.

He can hear his mother’s voice in his mind telling him what to do, that if he felt so bad about it he should apologize, helping him sneak into Thor’s room as children while the other boy had slept and ice cold sickness deep inside of him.

How Loki had curled up beside him and made himself sick with worry, apologizing over and over again Thor finally awoken and told him that it wasn’t his fault.

He’s made up his mind before he can ever doubt himself, “let’s go.”

\---

Thor looks worse than the time when they were children and Loki can feel too many eyes on him, crawling inside his own skin doesn’t feel like an option, but when he snaps at people to leave them be, they comply quicker than he ever would have expected. He supposes there are some plus sides to the entire kingdom fearing him now.

He’s not sure how to cure the eternal winter, he’s not sure how to even begin to fix all the wrongs he’s done, but he remembers somebody once telling him that warm hugs make all the difference, so he leans down and wraps his arms around the far larger figure who lays among the furs, but it doesn’t seem to do the trick like it did before.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never meant to hurt anyone. I just,” he pauses, unsure of what it even was that he wanted. Loki had ran because he hadn’t wanted to hurt anybody, but he had stayed away because it was freedom, he was finally able to be who he had kept hidden without hurting anybody.

Except he had hurt somebody.

He doesn’t believe in true love, but he can’t deny magic, not when it races through his veins like a curse. Like the stories of his childhood of the frost giants that lived in the mountains and brought the winter snows upon them. Still, one thing he knows is that he will never forgive himself if he doesn’t try.

So feeling much like a fool he leans down and presses his ice cold lips to a pair that seem to match his in temperature. He pulls back after a moment, feeling like a complete fool, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, when he hears it a soft gasp of someone drawing in their first ragged breath in what feels like ages, but was probably mere hours, and hands that reach up at once to find his own. Pulling him forward once more to a kiss that is most definitely returned from a person who is most definitely alive.

“How many times do I have to tell you Loki, it’s not your fault…”


End file.
